During his last term at
Westminster in 1925, Esmond went to the Old Vic with his mother for the
first time to see a performance of A Winter’s Tale which further
strengthened his resolve to go on the stage. He also convinced himself
that the Old Vic was the place to start, and having been introduced by a
family friend to the theatre’s manager, Lillian Baylis, he plucked up
the courage to ask if there was a chance of becoming a student there.
He was rewarded with an audition some days later and on the strength of
a very nervous two lines from Henry V (“Once more unto the breech
……..”) he was accepted and told to report for rehearsals of The
Merchant of Venice at the end of August. The same audition group
included Heather Angel and Margaret Rutherford. Meanwhile he made his
first stage appearance before even leaving school, at the Pax Robertson
Salon, a small repertory theatre consisting mainly of amateurs which his
resourceful mother had discovered. Thus, in a theatre converted
from a disused chapel in Chelsea, Esmond made his first ever stage
appearance as Old Ekdal in Ibsen's The Wild Duck. No accounts
seem to exist of his performance, but it was valuable practical
experience and was soon followed by a part in a light comedy, Goldini’s
Curiosity.

In
August he started work at the Old Vic. “I realised as soon as I
had got over the nervousness of the first day’s rehearsals that this
was the life for me. I had never been so happy. I stayed in the
theatre every day as long as I could without appearing too foolish.
I arrived at the stage door of the Old Vic long before rehearsals
began and went home after everyone else had left.” His
first role was as Balthazar in The Merchant of Venice, a
modest part in a cast which included Edith Evans no less. This was
followed by the Marquess of Dorset in Richard III, and parts
in A Winter’s Tale, The Shoemaker’s Holiday and
Trelawny of the Wells. He also appeared as an extra in operas
such as Aida, Carmen and Don Giovanni.
tA programme from Esmond's second
season at the Old Vic, 1926/7.

Esmond’s first notice, for his part in Richard III,
did not hint at his future success. James Agate, having praised
Edith Evans and Balliol Holloway for their performances, added: “But
Mr Esmond Knight, as the Marquess of Dorset, reminded us more of the
football field than a royal palace.” This was presumably a reference
to his over-muscular legs. However, his athleticism did not fail to
impress others, if not the critics. Ninette de Valois, who gave lessons
in ballet to students at the time, saw his potential and tried to entice
him, unsuccessfully, into training as a ballet dancer. As an actor
Esmond must have done something right for he was invited by Lillian
Baylis to return for a second season at a salary of £1 a week, this time
appearing in Dr Syn, Macbeth (playing at least 4 parts),
King John, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and more ballet and
extra parts in operas such as Carmen and Lohengrin.

Servant to Macbeth - one of the
four parts played by Esmond in the 1926/7 Old Vic production.u

When the 1926/7
season at the The Old Vic came to an end, Esmond began the sometimes
arduous task of developing a career as a jobbing actor, doing the rounds
of agents’ offices and taking any and every opportunity that came his
way to gain experience. It wasn't long before he was invited to go on
tour with the Birmingham Repertory Company in a play called Yellow
Sands. At the time the Birmingham “Rep” was the best permanent
company in the country and fortunately for Esmond the engagement lasted
a year, mostly on tour performing in cathedral towns such as Exeter,
Gloucester and Lincoln. He played opposite an attractive actress named
Frances Clare, two years his senior, who very soon became the focus of
his romantic attention. “… I had to make love to her. It was fun
sitting on the upturned boat in a scene that we had together, plastered
with a bronze make-up and having to say all those things to her which I
hadn’t quite the courage to say offstage.”

Back in London when the run was over, Esmond again found
himself "resting" for a while, a situation that never failed to depress
him. Then he found work in a number of Sunday productions at the Arts
Theatre Club followed by his first West-End production, a melodrama
called Contraband at the Princes Theatre. For his role he was
heavily made up as an accomplice of the main villain and was delighted
to receive his first good notice from the critic James Agate: “I admire Mr Knight’s courage in affecting so much crepe
hair, but unless I am mistaken he has the makings of an actor.”

pIn The Return of the
Puritan, Golders Green Hippodrome, 1929.

Esmond and Frances
(or 'Fran' as she was widely known) became secretly engaged and in the
autumn of 1928 they again appeared on stage together at the Gate Theatre
Studio, London. The play was called Fashion and when the
production transferred to the Kingsway Theatre, Esmond stayed on at the
Gate to appear in To What Red Hell by Percy Robinson. The leading
role was played by Frederick Peiseley whose highly vigorous performance
was complemented by Edmond's calmness, a contrast which did not go
unnoticed by James Agate, who wrote: "But the performance which moved
me most was that of Mr Knight who never batted an eyelid during the
evening." Unfortunately, halfway through the run Esmond developed
mumps and even more unfortunately passing it on to numerous theatrical
colleagues and family members, including his parents, before being
confined to bed at home in Putney. It was now December and the
illness created something of a dilemma for Esmond as he had made wedding
plans for early in the New Year. The banns had been published but he had
yet to tell his parents. So it was on Christmas Eve 1928 that he marched
somewhat unceremoniously into their bedroom, where they too were
confined with swollen faces, and announced his intentions out of the
blue!

At 9:00 am on Saturday 19th January 1929 Esmond Pennington Knight (age
22) married Frances Clotilde Sabben Clare (age 24) at St.
Martins-in-the-Fields. Witnesses to the ceremony were Esmond's father
and Frances' father, James Clare. That evening it was a case of "the
show must go on" - Fran was on stage at the Gate Theatre and Esmond at
the Children’s Theatre in Covent Garden where he was playing in a series
of adaptations of fairy stories and folk songs, including Managee and
the Robbers and Today and Tomorrow. Until then, when he
wasn’t away on tour, Esmond had still been living at his parents’ house
in Putney, but the newly weds now moved into a flat at No. 11 Clarges
Street, off Piccadilly, once the home of Lady Emma Hamilton and which,
by Esmond's own admittance, "....was far too expensive."

Having been reunited on stage in Fashion for a while at the
Kingsway, the couple were soon out of work again and so they moved to a
more modest accommodation in Manchester Street. Esmond was forced to
leave Fran for a time whilst he travelled to Paris to join the cast of
Maya by Simon Gantillon at the Studio des Theatres des Champs
Elysees. The play was set in a brothel and had been banned in the UK and
America; consequently it was drawing huge audiences in France! Esmond
was then invited by Albert de Courville, a successful theatrical
producer and sometime director, to stay on in Paris to appear in a play
about the Great War called The Man I Killed.

At home in England, Fran had succeeded in gaining a part in a play
called Nine Till Six in which she appeared with Jill Esmond, who
during the run married a very promising young actor called Laurence
Olivier. But when Esmond returned in the summer of 1929 he still found
it difficult to find any kind of work at all. Depressed and rather
disillusioned with the theatre, he travelled down to Sevenoaks in Kent
to stay with his uncle, Captain Charles Knight, a well known naturalist
with whom he shared a passion for birds and wildlife. From there he went
on to stay with a friend, Vernon Sewell, a technician in the sound
department at Nettlefold film studios in Walton-On-Thames, previously
the studios of pioneer film maker Cecil Hepworth and where Esmond would
soon be making films himself with Michael Powell. Sewell's hobby was
boats and they spent some time together on his cabin cruiser at Bosham
in Chichester Harbour. While they were there they witnessed the
Supermarine S6 high speed seaplane fly over as it won the 1929 Schneider
Trophy.

Back in London, Esmond's first job was to help provide sound effects for
a radio version of The Prisoner of Zenda with Denis Freeman with
whom he had worked on Fashion. Then towards the end of the year
his luck began to turn and he found work in two plays - The Return of
the Puritan at the Golders Green Hippodrome and in Art and Mrs
Bottle with Joan Barry at the Criterion. Like many actors, Esmond
suffered badly from nerves before going on stage. But for him there had
been an additional hurdle to overcome - a stutter from which he had
suffered since childhood. He would read through his lines and anxiously
look out for problem words that began with a C, or P, or T, or D in
order to be prepared to tackle the problem. He discovered that the
stutter completely disappeared if he sang: "So I used to make up this
crazy, meandering tune and learn my lines to it." Ironically, in
Art and Mrs Bottle Esmond played the part of a nervous young artist
who stuttered. Acting an affliction that he normally worked hard to
avoid was very difficult for him and later described the experience as
"absolute purgatory".

Towards
the end of 1929 the author of Art and Mrs Bottle, Benn Levy,
wrote a brand new play, The Devil, and seriously considered
Esmond for the leading role. Ultimately, however, Levy chose someone
else for the part, Denis Neilson Terry, breaking the news to Esmond in
his dressing room with these words: "It's no good, Esmond, you just
aren't the right shape!" Nevertheless, other opportunities
were coming his way and the 1930s began well for Esmond as far as stage
commitments went, and he found himself back where he had started his
professional acting career five years earlier, as a member of the Old
Vic company in a Shakespeare play, Hamlet, albeit at the Queen's
Theatre rather than the Old Vic Theatre itself.
tBack
with the Old Vic Company in 1930 for a West End production of Hamlet
featuring John Gielgud in the leading role for the first time.

In 1926 he had played Guildenstern in an Old Vic
production and now he found himself playing the other former student
friend of Hamlet's, Rosencrantz. This was no ordinary production of
Hamlet, however. The leading role was taken by an exceptional young
actor who at 26 (just two years older than Esmond) was the first man to
be given the part under the age of 40 - John Gielgud.

The new decade was also to consolidate the tiny foothold Esmond had
managed to achieve in the British cinema which had fared badly in the
1920s and was struggling to keep up with mighty competition from
Hollywood and huge technical advances surrounding the arrival of the
"talkies".